Xie was a staunch supporter of women working - early on he'd established a Women Comrades' Publicity Team， and during land reform he'd promoted women's liberation， and won a lot of support amongst the people for it. He was well aware that women were being oppressed， and that where women's liberation had been begun all Party work was subsequently easier to carry out. So， as he turned this promise into action， he relied on the women of fishing fami-lies leading the way. According to traditional customs in Lufeng， fishermen's wives did not work in the fields. It was a running joke that they were so unused to fieldwork they didn't actually know how to bend their legs. Now though， the women weren't working and the men had too few boats， and every day the village's circum-stances became more strained. Xie led the women of the area in abolishing the old custom and allowing women to work. In fact， he knew that having them plant sweet potatoes wouldn't fix any of the underlying problems； his plan was to expand the discussion about the problem of boats by making women economic actors， thereby giving them a voice.
The women of Changhu production brigade soon brought several hundred mu of land under cultivation. Although it was poor land， sweet potatoes would grow there easily. The process of theoretical discussion in Changhu eventually came to the contra-diction between old customs and the new society. Higher-up newspapers began to hear of it， and reporters began to visit from all over the province. In a short time， Changhu was on everyone's lips， which Xie used to sort out the principal contradiction that he'd originally set out to resolve.
By modern standards， the fishing co-operative that Xie set up was hardly dissimilar to a joint-stock co-operative. There were barely any households in Changhu that could afford to build new boats， as the price of doing so was far above the means of a peasant. Nor would the nation give them money to purchase boats； addi-tions to the fleet had to be paid for by the commune. On reflection， Xie decided that this was what Changhu needed to do. Of course， at the time the concept of owning "stock" in a People's Commune was heresy of the worst kind， so Xie's idea was termed "pooling resources".
Thanks to the newly-instituted involvement of women in productive work， Changhu's name became known outside the brigade's territory， and outside parties began to take an interest. The National Bank was happy to lend money to the commune to fund the project， paying 60% of the cost of the new boats. More importantly， the influx of resources from the nation helped disguise the joint-stock lines along which the commune had been reorganised. As a result of all this， the supreme contradiction in Changhu production brigade was resolved.
The masses and cadres of all levels were in agreement： this was a great victory for Mao Zedong Thought. Changhu had become a model production brigade， its requests no longer subject to scorn and its reorganisation encouraged. The links between the fisher-men's interests and joint-stock system that allowed them to acquire boats became ever closer. That was the Changhu model： whatever flag it flew as a cover， its economic performance and individual incomes rose sharply. There was another big achievement worth flaunting - between the brigade's reorganisation and the Cultural Revolution， not one more person fled to Hong Kong！
12
After the meeting on Mount Lushan， the Central Committee released its Instructions for Opposing Right-Deviationist Tought to Party members， spreading the anti-rightist struggle to all ranks of the Party. Word got round amongst cadres that old Marshal Peng had committed ideological errors， "Peng Dehuai's ultra-rightist positions are miles beyond even what rightists would consider acceptable！" being the common phrase.
As the anti-Right-deviationist movement was getting underway in Guangdong， Xie Fei was moved from his politically sensi-tive position as the county's Party committee vice-secretary and publicity chief to vice-chair of the country government， keeping his seat on the county standing committee. This was a very unusual transfer that came at a very uncertain time. Had he fallen from favour politically or was the committee trying to protect him？ There was no way of knowing. The speech he had given at the county publicity cadres' meeting was still fresh in many people's minds， and shortly after his transfer the publicity department had suffered a rude shock： three "problematic" cadres were identi-fied in quick succession， and quickly ferreted out of offce. Two of them were vice-chiefs of the publicity bureau at the time of their dismissal. This was clearly not a coincidence.
27-year old Xie was having trouble surviving in the new polit-ical atmosphere in Lufeng. Although his work remained so good that in addition to vice-chair of the county government he also became secretary of the Party committee， he was in no mood to risk drawing attention to himself with another large-scale under-taking， rather he kept quiet and sober-headed. If the Great Leap Forward had left him at a loss， the thought of what the anti-Right-deviationist campaign might do to him was terrifying.
In Beijing， an old revolutionary much like Xie Fei， whose fate would later be inextricably linked with that of Guangdong and the South， was facing up to a near-impossible choice. In the begin-ning of 1960， a letter that told of unimaginable suffering was sent to the State Council， and placed on vice-premier Xi Zhongxun's desk. That night， his stomach rumbling with hunger， Xi returned to his offce after a meeting. Over the last few days the food supply had become strained， the rations of central authorities and State Council members being cut in response. Even the top leaders had suffered cutbacks. He had a drink of water to settle his stomach， then began to work through his inbox. An worn-out envelope caught his attention； he took the letter out， read over it and gasped despite himself： people were starving to death in Anhui， suppos-edly one of the most productive provinces in the country！
It wasn't the first he'd heard of starvation， but all previous reports had come in from areas where crises were not unusual. If Anhui， the breadbasket of east China， was suffering shortages then there was no telling how bad things may get. Xi Zhongxun closed his eyes and began to think. Like so many other Party members， he couldn't bear to hear of ordinary people suffering unnecessary bitterness and hardship. Reading this letter， so full of hope that the Party and the People's government could help， he knew that things were getting really bad. But this was a sensi-tive time： less than six months after the Mount Lushan meeting， where Peng Dehuai had railed against the problems he saw and suffered astonishingly harsh treatment as a result， the whole Party was still absorbed in the campaign to "oppose Right deviationists and Peng sympathisers". Many areas in the grip of food shortages were persisting in punishing those who stored food and keeping the communal canteens open， and many high-ranking cadres were staying quiet out of fear in the face of ever more Leftist policies.
To submit this report to the Central Committee now could have horrific consequences， and he would have a hard time finding allies to back him up. He'd fought together with Peng Dehuai in the Northwest for many years， and there was no denying they'd been friends. Members of the "Peng-Huang-Zhou-Zhang Military Clique"[2] could be found in almost every government department， but he was the only one in the State Council. Did he really want to dig his own grave？ What's more， if he exposed the problem， what would the leaders of Anhui and the Eastern Provinces Bureau say？ They were all loyal to Mao！ He would be attacked from all sides. Why， after Peng Dehuai's fall， would Xi want to jump after him？
But images from the letter haunted him： the elderly weak from malnutrition， children barely conscious from hunger， cadres imprisoned for pulling seeds from the soil out of hunger . . . he thought of the spring of 1943， on the northern plain in Shaanxi， when Chairman Mao had given him a piece of bold and cursive calligraphy from his own hand："The Party comes first." Those words had been at the heart of everything he did since. Now， the problems of the people had become the problems of the Party， and the Party's interests had been harmed. Was he putting the Party first， or himself？ For a long time he stayed silent， before suddenly taking out a sheet of paper， writing at tremendous speed in elegant handwriting a letter addressed to the Premier， for the attention of the Chairman . . .
It was fortunate that he did. That letter woke up the central authorities， blinded by the promise of miraculous yields to come， to the real situation. Mao Zedong sent large teams of cadres all over the country to collect firsthand research on the actual condi-tions. The later conclusion of Liu Shaoqi in front of seven thousand cadres that the famine was thirty percent down to natural disasters and seventy percent down to human mistakes， and Mao Zedong's self-criticism in which he accepted blame， were all thanks to the untiring hard work of Xi Zhongxun and other founding figures of New China.
Guangdong Provincial Committee also got a sudden awakening from the ideological haze of the Great Leap Forward， ordering the extension of theoretical study and discussion amongst cadre work groups. The South China Bureau and Guangdong Provincial Committee decided to select a tranche of young leading cadres with a solid theoretical grounding from amongst the grassroots levels to study at the provincial Party college. When the offer reached Xie Fei， he immediately agreed. Changed in a heartbeat from a county secretary to an assiduous student， he had no regrets；on the contrary， he felt it essential to his own development.
So， Xie entered the provincial Party school as a student. He was soon selected to work in the South China Bureau to help set up a new offcial publication dealing with questions of political theory - Shangyou magazine， to be a temporary editor (tempo-rary because he was still the Lufeng county secretary). In the two decades between this and the beginning of Reform and Opening Up in Guangdong， he went from local offcial to civil servant， transferring to theoretical and secretarial work in a government department. He kept a low profile， staying alert to which way the political wind was blowing， staying away from the centres of power. Most of his time he spent studying， or introspectively examining ideas， becoming well-versed in political and governmental matters.
13
As far as Guangdong was concerned， 1958 was a year of bumper harvests thanks to leading grassroots cadres like Lin Ruo and Xie Fei， the inflated production figures it reported also less fanciful than in other areas. Henan had taken the lead in allowing figures to shoot up； Guangdong was essentially just caught up in the trend. Early season reports were almost entirely truthful， pressure only coming in towards the late season. The pressure came not from the provincial committee， but from the South China Bureau， itself under intense scrutiny. The then-head of the South China Bureau (simultaneously Party secretary for Guangdong) Tao Zhu had heard news from Hubei Province (at the time under the South China Bureau's jurisdiction) that exhilarated him.
Du Daozheng， at the time the Xinhua News Agency Guangdong head， remembers Hubei reporting to Tao that peasants there could eat everywhere they went， with no need for money or for ration coupons. The news left Tao incredibly excited； he said "For half a lifetime I've struggled for the peasants， for the revolution. For half a lifetime I've been at war and for a good few years of that I've been in prison. For thousands of years China's peasants have starved， and now for no money they're eating three meals a day. The dream of revolution has come true！" The same longing to see what they had fought so long and so hard for realised was unfortunately common amongst leaders of the time.
Du Daozheng also got fired up by the news， as worrying as it sounds to hear of a career journalist being so willing to believe such stories. The whole Xinhua News Agency was in a frenzy of excitement， including the editors of the People's Daily. Du was accompanying Tao at the time for a profile， and on the spot Du wrote an essay for Xinhua to publish entitled Tree Free Meals A Day. At the time the People's Daily only had four regional front pages， so the news from Hubei quickly spread around the whole country. It was no less inspiring for the peasants who had been hungry for thousands of years， and the title of Du's essay quickly became a slogan in its own right.
It didn't take long for conditions in Guangdong， the "land of plenty"， to deteriorate to the point where the peasants began to eat leaves and bark to stay alive. In Guangzhou， the southern metrop-olis of 1.5 million， the granaries only had a week's worth of food！ Tao simply refused to believe that the peasants had begun to starve and the city was dangerously low on grain. How could the bad old days have come back so quickly？ He thought it over again and again， and came to an unimaginable conclusion： it must be because people had been hoarding food！ That was how a system of food for no money had turned into a system where no amount of money could by food. It must be！
And so there began in Guangdong a campaign which many still remember： the anti-hoarding movement. How this movement ended isn't hard to guess， since no-one had any food to hoard. By April 1959， Tao began to see things clearly， and realise the scale of the problem he'd allowed to develop. He called an urgent meeting to investigate the situation and formulate a policy response. In May， the Guangdong Party Committee convened a meeting of all county leaders in Shantou in order to learn from the lessons of recent expe-rience. Tao raised all number of theories and opinions， but at no point did he blame the crux of the problem on the Great Leap， the People's Communes or the Party line. Whilst affrming the general direction of the movement， he nonetheless pointed out problems in its implementation， such as overreliance on the subjective inclina-tions of superiors and an atmosphere of exaggeration. To go this far was a remarkable， if tacit， admission of error. More remarkable was that Tao explicitly admitted that he himself had erred.
In the early days of the revolution， when it was beset on all sides by hostile forces， Guangdong had played a prominent role， and Hong Kong became an important channel for contact with the outside world. From 1957， China held national export fairs every year， its only window for foreign trade. They were later known informally as Guangdong export fairs； the "Southern Prov-inces Trade Goods Fair"， "Guangdong Provincial Goods Expo and Trade Fair" and two "Guangzhou Export Goods Expo and Trade Fair" in 1955 and 1956 were formally amalgamated and given a "national" status on paper in 1957. The first such "national" fair was of unprecedented scale， and afterwards twice every year Hong Kong businessmen on friendly terms with the Party such as Huo Yingdong， An Zijie， He Xian and Ma Wanqi would cautiously cross the border into Guangzhou to seek new commercial oppor-tunities. Thanks to the hard work and cooperation of Hong Kong and Macau businessmen， China maintained a low level of foreign trade， exchanging secondary agricultural products and mineral resources for precious foreign currency which could be invested in the areas most in need of economic support.
As Zhang Chunqiao wrote On eliminating the privileges of the bourgeoisie which advocated a renewed militancy and received Chairman Mao's praise， another person was surprisingly putting his weight behind arguing for a commodity economy and begin-ning to research it. This was Guangdong economist Zhuo Jiong. Zhuo believed that not only did socialism require the development of a commodity economy， communism did too. He emphasised that the laws governing price fluctuations were the same laws upon which socialist economic development fundamentally depended， and made his position even clearer by asserting："The commodity economy is an eternal fact of economics." These economic theo-ries were determined "heterodox" and "heresy" during the anti-Rightist campaign of 1957， bringing all manner of criticism down on Zhuo's head against which he had no right of refutation.
After the anti-Rightist campaign， he was stripped of all Party positions， and publication of his work Te Socialist Market Economy was banned. During the Cultural Revolution， Zhuo was branded a target of dictatorship and imprisoned in a cowshed. Despite the unending insults and torture， Zhuo never bowed to political pressure. He maintained that as a seeker of truth， clinging to tradition was unacceptable； his role was to come up with new theories and understandings through research and consideration， using Marxist positions， viewpoints and methods to conduct inves-tigations into new situations and problems that arose in response to new developments.
After the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee[3] in 1979， Zhuo wrote the famous treatise On eliminating the Produce-rist Economy and Developing the Commodity Economy， asserting that the reason why a socialist economy developed too slowly was fundamentally down to "an economic system that is created around a producerist nucleus." The key feature of the produce-rist economy to Zhuo was its dependence on management by the political executive， and a producerist government could not help but intervene too often.
In October 1984， the Central Committee published its histor-ical Decision concerning Reform of the Economic System， in which it was accepted that the socialist planned economy was a planned market economy whose underlying basis was communal owner-ship. Zhuo Jiong's theories on the socialist planned economy had become one of the bases on which the theories of Chinese economic reform were founded. In June 1985， Guangdong hosted an economic forum on Zhuo's socialist market economy， and arti-cles were published in which it was claimed that Zhuo's theories had brought about a revolution in the history of Chinese socialist political economic thinking. And who was first to recognise Zhuo Jiong and the potentially epoch-marking significance and value of his ideas？ Who was first to support discussion of the socialist market economy？ None other than then-Vice-Secretary of Guang-dong Party Committee and later First Secretary of the province， Xie Fei.
注 释
[1]. i.e. Peng Dehuai， who criticised Mao to his face over the Great Leap Forward at a top-level Politburo meeting and was subsequently purged.
[2]. Named after Peng Dehuai， Huang Kecheng， Zhou Xiaozhou and Zhang Wen-tian， its four supposed leaders.
[3]. Generally held to be the beginning of the Reform Era.